Trajectory Planning and Tracking of Hybrid Flying-Crawling Quadrotors

Abstract: Hybrid Flying-Crawling Quadrotors (HyFCQs) are transformable robots with the ability of terrestrial and aerial hybrid motion. This article presents a trajectory planning and tracking framework designed for HyFCQs. In this framework, a terrestrial-aerial path-searching method with the crawling limitation of HyFCQs is proposed to guarantee the dynamical feasibility of trajectories. Additionally, a trajectory tracking method is proposed to address the challenges associated with the deformation time required by HyFCQs, which makes tracking hybrid trajectories at the junction between terrestrial and aerial segments difficult. Simulations and real-world experiments in diverse scenarios validate the exceptional performance of the proposed approach.